Latest revision as of 15:54, 17 June 2012

Contents

Description

PowerVR in an important GPU used by lots of SoCs used in embedded Linux and other products,
as shown here.
There is currently no Free Software 3D SoC Driver for PowerVR.

The proposal is to begin to reverse-engineer the PowerVR GPU, which
appears to be present in about 75% of the top-of-the-range ARM embedded CPUs.
Work has already been done to establish the GPU's on-board RISC instruction
set by a Polish free software developer. This work was done "passively"
(by analysing the proprietary libraries). The work needs to be continued
"actively", and a working OpenGL library created.

Reverse-engineering requires expensive proprietary disassembly tools
and requires lots of patience and undisturbed concentration in order
to maximise effectiveness.

In reverse-engineering, there are no guarantees - but you have to
start somewhere. In this case, the MesaGL software
library can substitute for the parts of the driver that *aren't*
accelerated, thus (if care is taken) at least a working (if
non-optimal) 3D SGX accelerated library can be provided throughout
the project.